Tuesday, May 15, 2018

I am reading stories in this year’s Best
American Short Stories randomly.They are fun, but rather lightweight.It’s not often that BASS is a
book you can take to the beach and read without worrying about being
distracted.But these stories don’t take
much concentration. Here are some comments on the first five. Maybe the next
five will be more challenging.

T. C. Boyle, “Are We Not Men?”

T. C. Boyle is the consummate professional writer, always on the
lookout for subjects that might “make a story,” and that’s what he is good at—“making
stories.”The subject of “Are We Not
Men?” as he makes clear in his “contributors’ notes” to the 2017 Best American Short Stories, is
gene-editing technology.The title is
from H. G. Well’s The Island of Doctor
Moreau, which is about a doctor who experiments with combining animal
species, often with humans, resulting in such creatures as hyena-swine,
dog-man, leopard-man, etc. In this story, Boyle gives us “crowparrots” and “micropigs”
and explores lightly the human use of CRISPR technology which allows the main
character and his wife to choose from a menu how their chromosomes can be matched
up to create a daughter.The story
reminds us that Boyle is primarily a satirist, not a short story writer--an
entertainer, not a powerful artist.

Danielle Evans, “Richard of York
Gave Battle in Vain”

The title is an acronym for the
colors that make up a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
Evans says the first thread of the story came from hearing a sermon on Noah’s
Ark, which perhaps lead to the first sentence of the story; “Two by two the
animals boarded, and then all of the rest of them in the world died, but no one
ever tells the story that way.” The rainbow, of course, is a sign of God’s
promise never to destroy the earth again with water—which the narrator says
seems like a “hell of a caveat.” The story centers on the wedding of Dori, a
pastor’s daughter, who has her bridesmaids wear the seven colors of the rainbow.
Evans says the real loneliness of the story lies underneath the opening
sentences—understanding that “every triumphant story of the things we survive
is also the story of the losses haunting it.” However, the reader has to wade
through lots and lots of plot stuff to get to this payoff—involving Rena and JT
detained in a small hotel in Africa because of the threat of a biological
warfare agent, Rena’s sister Elizabeth being shot by her husband because her
suspected infidelity, JT disappearing when he was supposed to be marrying Dori,
Dori and Rena searching for JT and ending up at a water park, etc. etc.It is a cluttered story that tries my
patience.

Sonya Larson, “Gabe Dove”

Sonya Larson’s “Contributors’ Notes” about this story seem to me more
intriguing than the story itself.She
recalls a period a few years earlier when she found herself suddenly single;
trying to date again, she discovered that many men were most interested in her
race, which is half Asian.It occurred
to her that the dating world may be one of the last remaining realms in which
people openly expressed racial preference. Larson says that although we tend to
think that attraction is a mysterious, deeply personal force, we often find
that forces of history, stereotyping, even public policy may shape what we
think is simply personal.She wondered
if what we think is our gut feelings may have a racial bias.So she set out to write a story that “houses”
these ideas—resonating like a bell tower around a bell.She concludes that although “Gabe Dove” may
seem like a simple dating story, what is actually at stake is “nothing less
than who we make available to ourselves to love.”Sounds like complex stuff, but I amnot sure the story can carry this much
weight.

Fionel Mazel, “Let’s Go to the
Videotape”

And here’s another story whose originating idea seems more complex than
the story itself.Mazel says the story
arose from her thinking about the influence of social media on children because
rather than worrying about its detrimental effects, she thought social media
was very helpful, finding herself in a community whose shared interest was
parenting, but then finding herself uncomfortable with feeling this way. She
asked the following questions: Is camaraderie necessarily fake simply because
you don’t know the people you are exchanging ideas with?Does publicizing personal details mean the
end of real friendship?She said the
story arose from her desire to find a framework for thinking through how all
this stuff might play out in the life of a man “hobbled by grief.” The result—a
story about a man who enters a video in America’s
Funniest Home Videos of his son being thrown over the handlebars while
learning to ride a bike--seems less about a complex human issue than it is an
opportunity for Maazel to create some funny scenes and dialogue.

Jess Walter, “Famous Actor”

I posted an essay on Jess Walter’s short story collection We Live in Water´ when it first came out.
My conclusion then was as follows:

Jess
Walter is a professional writer, a guy who makes much of his living
writing—first as a journalist and now as a fiction writer, who has cranked out
a political mystery novel, a 9/11 suspense novel, a social satire, and a movie
romance epic, and this collection of popular, entertaining, but certainly not
literary, short stories.If Jess Walter
signifies the “modern American moment,” then the moment is about fiction that
pleasantly passes the time but does not significantly stimulate the grey
matter.Just the kind of
disposable stories your Kindle was made for.

My
opinion of his story “Famous Actor” in the 2017 Best American Short Stories is pretty much the same.Walter is clever, with lines like: “First sex
is like being in a stranger’s kitchen, trying all the drawers, looking for a
spoon.”He invented a “famous actor”
because he wanted to write a story about a romantic encounter with a famous
actor, adding that he can tell if a story is going to work if he is having fun
writing it. Indeed Walter does seem to have fun inventing story lines for the
movies and tv shows the famous actor has made. The result is entertaining, but that’s all. Is
that enough?

No comments:

Ten Anniversary of My Blog

Friday, Nov. 16, is the tenth anniversary of my blog. I have been taking some time off because I have been working on a new book on the short story. I have submitted a proposal to a publisher and am waiting for a reply. I will let you know when I hear from them. Thank you for continuing to read essays in my archives.

Now Available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle

Click cover to go to Amazon and read the Introduction and first chapter.

Reality of Artifice

New Short Story Theories

Followers

About Me

Born and raised in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. Received B.A. from Morehead State University in 1963; M.A. from Ohio University in 1964; Ph.D. from Ohio University in 1966. Taught at California State University, Long Beach from 1967 to 2007. Retired and currently writing and blogging.

Dubliners Centenial

One hundred years ago, the great collection of stories Dubliners by James Joyce appeared. If you are interested in my comments on that collection, see my posts in April 2012 when the book was featured in Dublin's "One City, One Book."